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Posted: October 17, 2008

Nano-Meeter, a free forum to discuss nanotechnology and energy

(Nanowerk News) UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS) and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) invite the Santa Barbara community to attend a casual public forum called “Nano-Meeter” to discuss the possibilities for applying nanotechnologies to energy needs. The event will be held on Thursday, November 6, 2008 from 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. at the Mackenzie Lawn Bowls Club House located just off of upper State Street.

Nano-Meeter is a regular series designed to allow scientists and the community to meet and discuss nanotechnologies and their potential impacts. This session will provide an overview of energy and nanotechnologies: how will we meet our energy needs in the next 20 years, can nanotechnologies change the ways we generate and use energy, and can innovative technologies solve global climate change and our dependence on foreign oil?

Leading the discussion will be Alan Heeger, 2000 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and UCSB Professor of Physics; Craig Hawker, Director of the Materials Research Laboratory and UCSB Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Materials; and Dan Colbert, Executive Director of the UCSB Institute for Energy Efficiency.

The public is invited to come, listen, and participate. No science background is required.

Nanotechnology involves the manipulation and synthesis of new materials on a very small scale, the nanoscale. One nanometer is one billionth of a meter. By comparison, DNA is two nanometers wide, a red blood cell is 10,000 nanometers wide, and a single strand of human hair is 100,000 nanometers thick. Nanotechnology holds great potential in virtually every sector of the economy, including electronics, medicine, environmental monitoring, and energy. Nanotechnology is also, however, an emerging science with little known about its risks and implications.

With relevance to energy, nanotechnologies can be applied to regenerative energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydro-/tidal, and biomass. There are opportunities to apply nanotechnologies throughout the energy cycle, from source to distribution to storage and even usage.